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| On the left you can just see a picture of the banner 17" x 32" |
I must be daft . . .
It might have been the after effects of the turkey dinner, that full and contented feeling letting one's mind wander. And it was wandering as I sat on the sofa contemplating how I would decorate the livingroom this year for Christmas. I have a Christmas topper I throw over the big trunk, but as I did a mental inventory of quilts for the wall, I could think of nothing with a holiday theme to replace what now hangs in the space where I rotate my art quilts. For no reason I can fathom, the idea suddenly popped into my head that I could make something to hang there. I knew just the thing, a "JOY" quilt pattern I'd been saving for years - the pattern torn from a 1991 issue of Quiltworks magazine. Sure, I could probably finish it this week, if I put my mind to it. And my mind was definitely on board. By Sunday I'd found the pattern and dug out fabric - I have quite a bit of Christmas fabric I rarely find reasons to use - and started cutting strips. Monday I cut more strips and worked out how to copy an odd shape in the pattern.
Yesterday it was sewing time, getting those strips sewn together and subcut into pieces for the checkerboard inner border. As long as I've been away from traditional piecing like this, I hadn't forgotten a few tricks of the trade. The strips were cut 1-1/2 inches wide and those subcuts would also be that wide, 53 of them. To keep from making errors lining up my ruler, I placed a stickie note on the underside along the 1-1/2 inch mark. Oh, that really helps to speed things up.
Forty of the subcuts then got sewn together to make checkerboard strips - twenty for each side. The remaining thirteen subcuts were sewn together to run across the bottom connecting the two sides.
Then today, I ground to a halt. You see, the pattern called for muslin for the light areas and I definitely was not going to do that. Instead, I was seduced by the tan fabric on the left, rich and mottled and looking so good with the red and green fabrics I'd chosen. But as I looked at the picture in the pattern, I wondered if it was too dark rather than just rich and warm. I revisited the stack of Christmas fabrics and pulled the one on the right with its off-white background with its own sightly mottled surface and those sprigs with red berries. It's one that came from my mother-in-law when she gave up on quilting and sent everything she had to me. She'd wanted to make a Christmas wallhanging with that one, had a pattern from a book picked out but eventually lost interest. So I made it for her with the fabric she'd sent. It's closer to what the pattern calls for and I know that is clouding my judgment on which to pick. Once made up, will I be disappointed with the rich tan because it reads too dark, or disappointed in the lighter sprigged one because it reads too bright? My auditioning isn't getting me anywhere.
As if that weren't enough to put the skids on, the next step is actually making the letter blocks. I can get to cutting some of the pieces that are from the red fabric, but can go no further until I make that background fabric choice. But boy, is that going to be a lot of fuss, all those piece with angled ends. I do know a method to make it easier, but I'm not looking forward to it. Instead, in my weaker moments, I've been wondering about just cutting out the letters whole and fusing them to the squares of fabric. Well, I have to do something today . . . What do you think about all this?
